I've honestly been underestimating Paperclip all this time! Paperclip is basically a local stationery store which can be found in malls or in office buildings. It's dull. After living in Japan, I DESPISE stationery stores here because they're so dull. Japan is HEAVEN for stationery lovers. I dislike Paperclip because the store looks like a warehouse. It's awful and makes me not wanting to go in and everything that they sell just looks like crap. I just don't like it!!!

However, I really needed an A5 binder last weekend to re-organize my clear stamps. We went to Kelapa Gading Mall, I was looking for HSBC counter to redeem my points into shopping vouchers. My mom was shopping for clothes at a bazaar right in the center of MKG 3, and right in front of the bazaar, was Paperclip. I went in thinking that I'll just quickly grab an A5 binder and go straight to the cash register but... I was mesmerized by a whole aisle of Liquitex goods. I've never seen this many of them, there are EVERYTHING. I was particularly intrigued with liquid acrylic what the hell are those?? Mediums, gels, gesso, clear gesso, palette knifes, everything that aren't easy to find in regular stationery stores. I've seen Liquitex being used a lot by American Mixed Media Artists, but I've never encountered them even in bigger stationery stores like Gramedia. I don't think I've seen them in the one art store with the most comprehensive variety of things 'Toko Prapatan', either. WOW.

I really want to try gouache and haven't found them yet and there were so. many. types. of gouache. there! I couldn't believe it. They have some on their discount rack with very low price. Granted, it's Chinese brand and it's probably low quality, but I'm an amateur so I don't need anything fancy. I just need something to try out with and see if gouache is for me, so I bought a set of Taiwanese gouache with a cute pink box. I got 18 colors in tiny tubes and the result is great! Very vibrant just like I how I love my paint :3 Also they got neon pink, I never can resist anything that comes in neon pink.

So I managed to go through last weekend without EXO, except for a couple of glances on updates I still get on twitter and some failed attempts of self-restrain to not open tumblr. But hey! I got a great weekend. I went home straight after work on Friday and reached home in less than one hour! *insert success kid meme here*

On Saturday it was day of Arafa and all the girls at home did Arafa Fasting (my brother and dad didn't because they're lazy). I haven't fast since Ramadhan, so I did wonder if I could get through it okay. Turns out, it was just fine. I had supper (just one chop of Clarias fish and a glass of milk) at 4.30 AM, accompany my mom cleaning the house and cook until around 9 I think, took a nap til 12, went to the doctor at 2 PM, went home at 5.30 PM after a facial that took forever, and it was only 30 minutes left until breakfast!

The next day in the morning I went for Eid al-Adha prayer at the nearest mosque from our house. In the afternoon I went grocery shopping with my dad. Mom cooked my favorite food for Eid and life felt good.

I decided that I want to start doing something to take poor sick Lulu off my mind, I just have to get busy. So I thought it might be the right time to start doing some stamp carving, something I've been wanting to do for a while. I've been a fan of Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's artworks and one of the things she does best is stamp carving. I even bought her book on stamp carving, plus some stamp carving starter kit when I went to Tokyo last May, but haven't had the time to sit and actually do it.

Here's the result of my first ever self-carved stamp!! It's a repeat pattern and I'm pretty proud of myself 8D It was ... not as hard as I thought, but also not easy. I think I need a better carving tool with tiny round eye.

Other than that, I was scrambling through my stamps collection just a couple hours before I had to go back to my apartment. This is for my postcard project with my sister. I managed to group them by color scheme and adhere them to a black book - so that it'll be easier to scan later on when I have more time. I have inspirations for our first batch of cards to issue! :D Also our little savings almost reach $300 which we will use to start this business. Excited for everything to start, but I also will need my sister to cooperate.

( on postcrossing )

Having an artist's block is frustrating as hell. I want to feel happy by making art, but nothing I made satisfies me and I kept getting frustrated with everything for the last month. It started with a mixed media shopping spree that I did back in February with my birthday-month-discount at a scrapbook store. I purchased a very expensive thing called 'Creative Palette' from Stampendous, in hope of getting something similar to Gelli Art Printing Plate. I kept seeing tutorials on Gelli Art printing and it looks like an awesome tool with gorgeous results which allows tons of fun creativity. The sad thing is, that I can not get it here, and the shipping cost is too crazy if I order it directly from the US. So when I saw the Creative Palette, I was excited and I was so sure that this has the same quality as the Gelli Art one. But no. IT SUCKS. DON'T BUY IT. It dries your paint so fast you don't even have the chance to do anything with it. And when you apply so much paint, it's such a waste of paint! And the papers I used to make my prints stuck on the plate. I've tried so many ways, so many times and this product is just not working the way I need it to be. I've made so many failed prints which ... I'm sure I can incorporate for something in the future somehow, but it was still so frustrating. Yesterday I decided that I'm going to have fun by doing things that don't have anything to do with the monoprinting plate. It worked! I made some cards I thought are decent for sending out to people, I did some other fun techniques I haven't done in a while, and in the end I finally could enjoy art-making process again.

( and another withdrawal )

On other note, I haven't changed my icons in a while and I am desperately needing new ones.

Today I woke up not wanting to go to the office. It felt so hard to leave home on Sunday night after being so high on dopamine working on different art projects the whole weekend.

I haven't been making anything art-y for a while, except for that one time I did a scrapbook workshop for Christine back in March. I was so inspired by postcrossing and mail arts, and the art exchange I was going to do with krissaur, that I NEEDED to be with my art supplies immediately. I worked on my card for Kriss first, and in an instant my room went from tidy to looking like a plane crash site.

My mom came in to show me something and ...
Mom : Hey look at this picture of your aunt, she did a very cute hijab style and - OH MY GOD! What are you doing??
Me : I was making a card! (I was finished and was in front of my computer when this conversation took place)
Mom : Your room looks like this for a card?
Me : Well I need different supplies to make one card ...

( To think about it ... )

Lately I am hooked with swapping things with people around the globe.

Rando
At first I was crazy about this application called Rando, what it does is that you send one picture to a random person all over the world, and you'll get one back in return. You can only send a real time photo from your phone, no saved photos, no filters, no zooms. Sometimes you get unique, interesting photos from different countries, but many of the times you get mediocre photos from South Korea, lol. (No, seriously like more than half of the users are from South Korea)

Here are some of my favorites that I got from all over the world!


Art Swap
krissaur saw my post about distress inks and she asked me if I want to do art exchange with her. OMG! The last time I did art exchange was sometime in 2009, I was so excited when she asked. Sadly I don't have all of my art stuff with me at my apartment room, so I have to wait til weekend to do it.

Postcrossing
I saw Esti tweeted about postcrossing the other day, and I was intrigued. In this digital era when people talk to each other online, snail mail has became a rare thing. Postcrossing's concept is that you send one postcard to a person, and get one random postcard in return. I went to several stationery and book stores near my office yesterday, but there are no good Indonesian-themed postcards out there. I live in Jakarta and I wish to find anything that depicts Jakarta but alas, the ones available is a photo of Bunderan HI from 20 years ago with a bad quality print. Seriously, this concerns me.

1. Was the Spaghetti Aglio Olio of Ninety-nine restaurant aka my dinner yesterday
2. I started to save my 20Ks again. I did before with my sister (she used our saving to buy a PS3 in the end lol).
3. Have I ever told you about my precious Distress Inks collection being lost in the process of sending them from Japan to Jakarta? Well this, was my revenge to get them back in my life.
4. Oolong Tea I bought at Breadtalk, had it for lunch today along with some breads from Breadtalk.
5. My Ceci arrived on Tuesday!! LOVE.
6. More Distress Inks and Stains from today (... I know, I have a problem)
7. If I have told you that I have all colors of Sarasa pen there is, would you believe me? (The answer is you shouldn't because I don't have the dark blue)
8. My work table yesterday
9. When I passed by Periplus on Wed I couldn't help but noticed that they have Wreck This Journal on their shelf! I've been wanting this journal I even made a stupid version of it myself when I was still in Japan. I grabbed it and I'm excited to start journaling in it! :D

Also my XOXO package came in the mail when I got home today!

Oh and the most important event of the week! IS! That my best friend fe came back from Japan and I had a fun dinner and a visit to her room on Monday :D I'm going to Bandung tomorrow with my parents, hopefully it will be a good trip and the traffic is not so stressful.

This is my entry for challenge #38 : Create Something @ theaviary :D

( Read more... )

I got so excited about this challenge, I handcrafted my card :D



Well, it looks awesome and it also felt great to make some traditional art, but now I realized that it's not useful at all cos now I will have to make another card with my filled prompts, lol. It was really because I think it's annoying to try to fit 24 words into small squares.